For aquaculture farmers, the ability to locate a farm away from coastal areas enables close proximity to markets, providing benefits in freshness and reduced shipping costs.
Caviar and oyster farms demonstrate that demand exists for locally produced superior goods and that the firms producing these goods can out-compete other producers based on both quality and cost. Caviar farms leverage a technological advantage to produce a very good product, and oyster farms exploit location and resource price to offer higher quality, fresher goods, at competitive prices. Capital-intensive systems in close proximity to markets can provide superior quality, but usually not lower production costs.
A need exists in the aquaculture art to lower production costs. Reduction in production costs can be realized in many ways, such as by a reduction in an amount of food required to be purchased, a reduction in the cost of maintaining acceptable water chemistries, a reduction in the cost of disposal of byproducts, and/or enhanced growth performance of species raised on an aquaculture farm relative to the cost of inputs required for growth.
Another need exists in the industry to elevate the quality of farmed aquatic products to a level comparable with equivalent products from wild caught fisheries. This may be accomplished by feeding cultured organisms the same food they would consume in the wild, or a diet optimized for improvements over wild nutrition. Taste, texture, appearance, health, and nutritional content of farmed organisms can be controlled through the food sources those fish are fed. Much research exists demonstrating the benefits of feeding aquatic organisms the same natural live feed they would eat in the wild, or alternative live feed that enhances certain attributes. Even processed combinations of these natural ingredients in the form of pellets, pastes, flakes, or slurries are thought to be superior to other commercial feeds containing fillers and less costly protein, fat, and carbohydrate sources, or proportions of these nutritional compounds not consumed by aquatic organisms in the wild so as to reduce cost or stabilize food.